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Electric cars in Canberra and the genocide in Palestine

Better Place Australia has just launched its first battery re-charge point in Canberra.

The company has big plans. It will expand these points across Canberra. Electric cars will go on sale in bulk in 2012. Then there will be re-charge points set up along the Highway between Canberra and Sydney.

‘First we take Canberra, then we take Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane’ seems to be its approach.

Better Place would not be able to do this without local Labor minority Government support. That minority Government survives through an agreement with the Greens and their votes.

BPA is working with Renault-Nissan on electric cars.

Electric cars are a good idea, aren’t they?

No, not when they are built on the bones of Palestinians.

Better Place Australia (BPA)appears to have close links with Better Place Israel (BPI). Because BPA is a private company it is difficult to get ownership information for free, but its website acknowledges BPI as an important link in the expansion plans of Better Places. As its says ‘Better Place Australia is part of a global company dedicated to zero emissions driving.’

Certainly Israel is a testing ground for Better Place globally. For example Israel is the first nation where there will be a full roll out of battery re-charge points across a country.

Before BPI sells its first car in Israel it is establishing a network of thousands of charging spots on the country’s entire road system including settler roads and in settlements in the West Bank.

The company of former World Bank head James Wolfensohn has invested in BPI. To quote from the Electronic Intifada:

“Israel is a perfect test tube” for the electric car, Wolfensohn was quoted as saying in the February 2008 issue of Israel High-Tech & Investment Report. “It needs to be tested, and [BPI founder Shai] Agassi is to be commended for testing it and the Israeli government for trying it out.”

The expansion of Better Place on Palestinian land will provide lessons for the run out in Canberra. The network in Canberra will be built on the bones of Palestinians.

Without Israeli support there would be no Better Place. According to the Electronic Intifada again:

While operating as a private company — with its head office nominally in California — Better Place has been dependent on Israeli government support from the start. Initially, Agassi wrote a concept paper for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders initiative. Agassi shopped it to various world leaders but found no takers, he told the BBC’s One Planet. “Then President [Shimon] Peres of Israel picked up on it,” Agassi recalled. “But the challenge to me was don’t ask us to do it. If you think it’s such a great business, go do it yourself. And that’s how it became a company instead of a government agency.” More recently Agassi told CNN, “I would not be doing this today were it not for [Peres]” (“Shai Agassi: One man’s mission to turn all cars electric,” CNN, 19 April 2010).

The Electronic Intifada sums up the case against BPI. It says:

The company has been a poster child for efforts to greenwash Israel — presenting it as a haven for environmental technologies — yet it has close ties to Israel’s military and political establishments and its principal officers express an explicitly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab agenda.

Better Place Australia has such apparently close links to Better Place Israel and will set up its network in Canberra based on the dispossession of the Palestinians that the local Canberra Labor Government should abandon its partnership with and support for BPA’s roll out of battery re-charge points in Canberra.

If not, then the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign should turn its attention to Better Place in Canberra.

Thanks Ross. I have made the same point in the past. I think the way BPA in Canberra are dealing with this is to have the overnight garage chargers plugged into or paying for electricity from renewable sources such as solar and the like.

Comment from WalterTime November 1, 2010 at 7:46 am

John. If you want to be consistant then you must also refuse to use ANY technology that derives from the State of Israel, such as SMS. I presume you have never sent or received a text message in your life – that system is apparently built on the bones of Palestinians, so if you want to be honest with Canberrans, you need to stop using your mobile phone for any messages.

And to avoid being a hypocrite, you would also call on the Government to ban iPads, as the screen devise is an Israeli invention.

I also presume you oppose Stem Cell research, much of which is being conducted in, you guessed it, the land of Palestinian bones.

Sykpe – you’d want to ban that one comrade, the latest additions are based on Israeli investions; and of course the technology used at 70 international airports to screen against bombs … that should be boycotted too. happy travelling my friend.

And please John, don’t ever get heart failure because you would have to ask the Canberra Hospital NOT to give you the latest life saving medication.

A rate your letter to the Canberra Times as one of the most hypocritical I have ever read.

John
If you are seriously proposing to boycott all Israeli made products -to ensure that your action is not a meaningless gesture, I look forward with great interest to seeing you demonstrate your sincerity and consistency by following through with a complete boycott of all Israeli products.

You can make an immediate start by examining your computer and throwing it out if it contains software or an Intel Pentium chip that was developed in Israel. Of course you should also avoid instant messaging based on ICQ, that was invented by Israeli teenager Arik Vardi and three friends. And you will of course avoid mobile telephony, developed in Israel by Motorola, the camera telephone chip and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) as used in Skype and similar applications.

You will be hard pressed to locate all the Zionist components in your Security Software, Network Firewalls, Anti-virus programs, System Software, Microsoft Operating Systems (XP and Vista), Google, Disk on Key and Wi-Fi, but I am sure you will assiduously check your equipment and rule out everything with Zionist roots. Unless you do so thoroughly, it will appear that you don’t have the courage of your convictions and that your letter to the Canberra Times was just empty meaningless rhetoric.
I could go on and on about the items you must avoid to be consistent in your attitude, but for humanitarian reasons you will be excused if for medical reasons you or members of your family use the “camera pill” developed in Israel to investigate the intestines painlessly by swallowing a pill containing a mini camera and transmitter.

Despite your anti-Israel feelings, if you have a heart attack, don’t hesitate to let the surgeon insert a stent, which was developed in Israel.

You will also be excused if you or members of your family use new Israeli methods to measure and inject insulin for diabetics or Copaxone to reduce the physical breakdown caused by MS and other MS medicines such as Betaseron and Avonex. Similarly you will be excused for using Israeli developments in computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance systems (MRI), ultrasound scanners, nuclear medical cameras and laser surgery.

You will be excused too, if you use the Israeli developed Resperate, an interactive breathing device, for lowering blood pressure as well as treatments for cancer, diabetes, AIDS, auto immune diseases, Alzheimer, cardiovascular diseases and aging as well as the ReWalk, a robot suit that enables wheelchair users to walk, sit and stand again.

Comment from IanTime November 3, 2010 at 8:48 am

Er, according to the “Electronic Intifada”? You got any pictures of gas chambers or mass graves there John or are facts too annoying to get in the way of a trashy blog?

Palestinians can get land for peace whenever they’re ready and have been offered a state for peace (as opposed to rocket attacks and bus bombings) plenty of times.

Before 1967, Jews banned from holy sites and all Jerusalem synagogues destroyed. Since 1967, all religions free in Jerusalem. You got the ethnic cleansing on the wrong foot John.

Comment from JohnTime November 3, 2010 at 12:08 pm

Thanks Ian. I suggest you look at the UN definition of genocide. Driving people off their land fits squarely within that in the context of destroying their status as a people. That is what happened in 1948 – Deir Yessin springs to mind and the 750,000 refugees that the establishment of Israel and the actions of the zionists created. It has been ongoing ever since, and the latest peace moves are about furthering that process of destruction f fthe Paelstinians as a people, or keeping them in bantustans.

Comment from WalterTime November 3, 2010 at 1:24 pm

Scientists in Israel found that the brackish water, drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep, could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants, and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proves an ideal environment..

2. Israeli-developed designer-eyeglasses, promise mobile phone and iPod users, a personalized, high-tech video display. Available to US consumers next year, Lumus-Optical’s lightweight and fashionable video eyeglasses, feature a large transparent screen, floating in front of the viewer’s face that projects their choice of movie, TV show, or video game.

3. When Stephen Hawkins recently visited Israel , he shared his wisdom with scientists, students, and even the Prime Minister. But the world’s most renowned victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, also learned something, due to the Israeli Association for ALS’ advanced work in both embryonic and adult stem cell research, as well as its proven track record with neurodegenerative diseases. The Israeli research community is well on its way to finding a treatment for this fatal disease, which affects 30,000 Americans.

4. Israeli start -up, Veterix, has developed an innovative new electronic capsule that sits in the stomach of a cow, sheep, or goat, sending out real-time information on the health of the herd, to the farmer via email or cell phone. The e-capsule, which also sends out alerts if animals are distressed, injured, or lost is now being tested on a herd of cows, in the hopes that the device will lead to tastier and healthier meat and milk supplies.

5. The millions of Skype users worldwide will soon have access to the newly developed KishKish lie-detector. This free internet service, based on voice stress analysis (a technique, commonly used in criminal investigations) will be able to measure just how truthful that person on the other end of the line, really is.

6. Beating cardiac tissue has been created in a lab from human embryonic stem cells by researchers at the Rappaport Medical Faculty and the Technion – Israeli institute ofTechnology ‘s biomedical Engineering facility. The work of Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein, has also led to the creation of tiny blood vessels within the tissue, making possible its implantation in a human heart.

7. Israel ‘s Magal Security Systems, is a worldwide leader in computerized security systems, with products used in more than 70 countries around the world, protecting anything from national borders, to nuclear facilities, refineries, and airports. The company’s latest Product, DreamBox, a state-of-the-art security system that includes Intelligent video, audio and sensor management, is now being used by a major water authority on the US east coast to safeguard the utility’s sites.

8. It is common knowledge that dogs have better night vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing. Israel ‘s Bio-Sense Technologies recently delved further and electronically analyzed 350 different barks. Finding that dogs of all breeds and sizes, bark the same alarm when they sense a threat, the firm has designed the dog bark-reader, a sensor that can pick up a dog’s alarm bark, and alert the human operators. This is just one of a batch of innovative security systems to emerge from Israel which Forbes calls ‘the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies.’

9. Israeli company, BioControl Medical, sold its first electrical stimulator to treat urinary incontinence to a US company for $50 Million. Now, it is working on CardioFit, which uses electrical nerve stimulation to treat congestive heart failure. With nearly five million Americans presently affected by heart failure, and more than 400,000 new cases diagnosed yearly, the CardioFit is already generating a great deal of excitement as the first device with the potential to halt this deadly disease.

10. One year after Norway’s Socialist Left Party launched its Boycott Israel campaign, the importing of Israeli goods has increased by 15%, the strongest increase in many years, statistics Norway reports.

In contrast to the efforts of tiny Israel to make contributions to the world so as to better mankind, one has to ask what have those who have strived to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth done other than to create hate and bloodshed?

Comment from WalterTime November 3, 2010 at 3:18 pm

John, if driving people from their land is genocide, then surely Jordan is guilty too, for it has driven the Palestinians from thier state.

And what of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people expelled from Arab states in 1948? Where is their land, their property, their claims? Do you support a right of return for them?

Finally, why did the Palestinians reject the offer of state in 1937 when Lord Peel proposed one after his two year study of the region?

Why didn’t Egypt allow the creation of a Palestinian state when it ruled Gaza from 1948 until 1967?

Are you seriously suggesting that every person who says they are ‘palestinian’ comes from that tiny bit of land that was 13 km across and smaller than the ACT? Are you suggesting that no Palestinian comes from Jordan, the Lebanon or Egypt?

Comment from IanTime November 4, 2010 at 4:24 am

Firstly John, the Arabs have massacred Jews before plenty of times, this doesn’t prove genocide. Israel doesn’t drive people off their land. Of the 700,000 that fled the war that the Arabs started, about 20,000 were pushed out by Israeli forces. (There were about 800,000 Jews who fled Arab countries too, is that also genocide?) The fact is John, the Palestinians wanted war in 1948, and they wanted it again in 2000 when they were offered a state. They don’t have a peace camp, or a peace now or any party that believes in giving peace a chance. They do have killing Israeli civilians, hiding behind their own civilians, a lot of votes at the UN, support from oil power, and shills like you.

Arab nations are all judenrein John. Israel is 20% moslem. Again you have the ethnic cleansing on the wrong foot.

Comment from IanTime November 4, 2010 at 4:42 am

Speaking about genocide John, here is Hamas’ Charter:

Article 7:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

Article 11:
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

Article 13: Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.

And from Israel’s declaration of independence:
it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions;